So this is a for-profit operation where volunteers do the work? The site is vague about such details. "People like you helping people like us help ourselves?" Not good. You can be a for-profit or a non-profit, but pretending to be a non-profit when you're not is deceptive.
Their terms of use are awful.[1] Note that they want to operate under British law, where libel law favors the subject. They have an indemnification clause, so their volunteers could be compelled to reimburse WikiTribune if WikiTribune loses a libel suit. That's happened in the UK; see the famous McLibel case, where McDonalds sued two Greenpeace volunteers. That decision was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights. But, post-Brexit, that level of appeal will no longer be available.
They also appear to have plagiarized the terms of use from other sites. One section reads "We may, in our sole discretion, limit or cancel quantities purchased per person, per household or per order. ... We reserve the right to limit or prohibit orders that, in our sole judgment, appear to be placed by dealers, resellers or distributors." That exact text appears on other sites, usually ones that sell tangible goods. It's completely inappropriate here. Sloppy.
This stuff matters when the business involves pissing people off. Don't volunteer to write for this organization unless and until they work out the liability issue.
British libel law was reformed in 2013 in response to a major campaign related to your complaints. As I understand it the situation is a lot better now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_Act_2013
The idea of a for-profit institutions convincing volunteers to do the work is the same model Google uses for projects like Go, NPM uses for NPM, Docker uses for Dockerhub, StackOverflow uses for StackOverflow etc.
So far as I am aware (I am not an attorney) none of those institutions indemnifies voluntary contributors.
Small point: the defendants in the McLibel trial had nothing to do with Greenpeace. They were members of a small group called London Greenpeace that had no connection with the well known Greenpeace. So contrary to your post, the McLibel trial is not an example of an employer making their volunteers foot the bill for libel.
>> Their terms of use are awful.[1] Note that they want to operate under British law, where libel law favors the subject. They have an indemnification clause, so their volunteers could be compelled to reimburse WikiTribune if WikiTribune loses a libel suit.
Wow, that liability is enough to keep me from participating.
> So this is a for-profit operation where volunteers do the work?
Where do you get "for-profit" from? They can be a non-profit but still need money. But yeah, they should be explicit about that. Also, volunteers do part of the work.
This is very disappointing, but not surprising. I've been hoping for a new news outlet that can structure itself to be immune to a narrative or hive-mind mentality, I'd be happy to support such an organization.
It's seems to be carved out of news section from Wikipedia frontpage, like Wikia was carved out of Wikipedia trivia sections. It's again Jimmy who launches a private company and suddenly Wikipedia changes the rules to forbid trivia section to boot his for profit offspring. Conflict of interest it's called.
The article in the dupe thread suggested that this would combat "fake news," but I dunno about that. I get the impression that people who digest biased/questionable sources do it to express tribal affiliation more than some genuine need to be informed. Hell, many people share articles without even reading them; they're primarily concerned with what the headline in their feed says about their character rather than the world at large. I'm not sure if having (another) "evidence based" outlet is going to be of any use to your cranky uncle.
I think the real promise lies in Wikitribune potentially going toe-to-toe with "real news" like CNN or the Washington Post. These outlets also don't always get the facts straight and can't be said to have a diehard following. If a superior option presents itself, readers will follow.
I tried to track down some of the crazy news stories that were being shared broadly on Facebook and much of what I found was that they were algorithmically generated titles slapped onto the same URL and the actual "story" was copied bits from other semi-related stories.
You'd find really salacious headlines: "Hillary Clinton Murder Victim Speaks" and the actual story would be about her fundraising.
They were arbitraging the cost of buying a FB ad (to drive traffic and start the viral loop) against how many ads they could run on the site.
I agree that this won't help everyone, but I don't think it matters. Anyone who wants to stick their head on the sand will always be able to, I don't really see any way around that. I do think it is important for people seeking out accurate an unbiased information be able to do so effectively. This is becoming increasingly difficult.
Yeah, some people may not care about it and go on to consume questionable but ideological aligned news. However, this is for the people who do care about reliable and transparent news. For these people Wikitribune promises to do a great deal to combat fake news because at this time all they can do it to choose between different flavors of fake news.
Are the facts more important or are the topics? For example, the NYT is generally pretty factual however IMO the topics they select and placement in the periodical are the message.
So the fact that they write front page article on some terrorist attack in say France that kills 5 while a similar drone strike on the same day in Afganistan kills 20 and gets buried on page 30 is the point.
Who was is that once said the first casualty in any war is truth? And how many blows did we miss that lead to that first casualty?
Regardless, I see little downside to this and hope it's successful!
This is the root question. The discussion around fake news often touches the subject of press neutrality. Some will say mainstream press is biased and has an agenda, so-called mainstream will answer by proposing more fact-checking. However, truth and neutrality are situated in different dimensions. It seems to be relatively easy to avoid spreading lies for those who want to. Providing neutral news is an entirely different type of problem. Addressing the critics made to the press by promising fact-checked news might be perceived as only one more manifestation of unjust discretionary power of the press to determine what can be said.
Is striving for neutrality something the press should do? Or should it work on clarifying how biased it is, and why?
One thing Jimbo said in the Wired interview he did is that since the site will be crowdsourced, the donors will be able to decide what the journalists cover. So more niche topics might get covered this way if there is demand (the example he gave was "dog breeding").
I'd argue relative importance facts are more important than topics. Incorrect facts is more fundamental form of bias and topic bias is higher level.
Getting facts wrong constantly is either incompetent journalism or malevolent behavior.
Selecting topics with bias but reporting them accurately creates value for everyone and the bias is rarely malevolent in mainstream media. It just reflects and enforces the world view of the writers and readers.
This feels like Vox - another attempt to 'explain the news', or 'provide more context'.
The fundamental problem that these sites run into is a thorough understanding of issues in the news requires context, and very often not the kind of context that can fit into an 800 word blog post on a subject.
An 800 word blog or article of any sort necessitates that you're going to make choices about which evidence you're going to include, which sources are credible and which sources are not, which sources add to the discussion vs which only serve to obscure. As soon as you do that, you're adding bias.
You can set out to build an 'evidence based' news site, but what you quickly find is that you've built a site with paid journalists (who have their own biases) supported by volunteers (who are the people most likely to have political skin in the game).
The problem is that people want a shortcut for everything - they want an 800 word post that will tell them everything they need to know about Syria. No such thing exists. There's no substitute for actually putting in the work and navigating the bias yourself.
> WikiTribune is 100% ad-free, no one’s relying on clicks to appease advertisers; no one’s got a vested interest in anything other than giving you real news.
Ha! Oh c'mon, anyone who's experienced the activistism of certain groups on Wikipedia knows there's plenty of people with a vested interest in this kind of thing.
I understand what they're trying to do here, but beyond the problem of "fake news" there appears to be a deep crisis within the profession of Journalism itself. Wales is correct, in my opinion, that the proximate cause of this crisis is indeed social media. (If you don't agree just ask yourself how often you visit the masthead of whatever newspaper you typically read, and why that might be the case.) But I just don't see crowd-sourcing as the solution to this problem. I'm inclined to agree with @intended's diagnosis, and I feel like the solution has to come from the profession of Journalism itself.
So, in attempt to not be "that guy" that just complains here's what I'd suggest as a start.
- Institutions need to drop their relationship with Facebook et al (The Guardian has just done this [1]).
- There's a few places (and in the interest of avoiding starting a flame war, I'll forgo naming them explicitly) that parade themselves as "objective" sources of news by telling you they're explaining "complicated" concepts in digestible ways. In my view, that's just a rhetorical tactic to disguise what is actually just advocacy journalism. It's not objective at all, and seeks to form your opinion rather than present you with data from which you form your own. These places need to either be shut down, or pivot back to what we'd traditionally consider actual reporting.
- I consider myself reasonably well read, and read the actual, physical paper daily (when I can, I suppose). There is a distinct difference between the content I see pushed on the internet and what's in the traditional paper and it's this: increasingly articles that belong on the opinion pages are pushed elsewhere, probably because they know it'll generate more clicks elsewhere on the site because it makes either a controversial or marginally supported claim. In my view this directly contributes to the loss of faith people have in the Journalistic profession because it's just so damn easy to point out instances of bias. So, hire some old school editors and fire the "social media" guy and put content where it belongs.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head right now, but I'm pretty convinced that "crowd-sourcing" is not the answer to this problem.
> Wales is correct, in my opinion, that the proximate cause of this crisis is indeed social media.
I don't think social media has much to do with it. I think the confusion between the professions of journalist, entertainer and partisan political operative has much more to do with it.
> If you don't agree just ask yourself how often you visit the masthead of whatever newspaper
Why would it be important if I visit the masthead? That's like saying libraries are in crisis because people don't spend enough time in the lobby. That's not why one visits the library! The frontpage is an utilitarian tool, and if people can do without it, nobody cares.
> These places need to either be shut down
I don't think they should be shut down. If there's an audience for them, why not? Nothing "should be shut down" - if it has no audience, it will die off, it it does have one - it should serve it. The problem here is the audience of "give us facts and let us form opinion" is woefully underserved. This is solved by creating, not shutting down.
> So, hire some old school editors and fire the "social media" guy
Social media guy didn't write that awfully biased article. Some "journalist" did, the social media guy just posted the link on twitter. So why the social media guy should suffer? "Journalists" that do bad job should be called out and shamed, and social media is not where the blame should go. Hard to believe, but twitter can be used for good too, if only people would want to...
> In my view this directly contributes to the loss of faith people have in the Journalistic profession
I'd add that your second point also contributes to loss of faith: When propagandists call their publications journalism, and when other journalists treat them seriously, it brings down the credibility of all journalism. If any quack could call themself a heart surgeon then it would hurt the credibility of real heart surgeons.
Also, when people see their side publishing propaganda, they assume that all journalism is propaganda: One side says this, the other says that, it's all the same (that thinking is an explicit goal of propaganda - not to persuade but to discredit everyone, leaving no source of truth). But it's not the same; truth has real meaning and value, an only liars say 'well, everyone lies'.
I love the idea of trying a new business model for news delivery, especially one centered around facts.
I seriously hope this project can overcome the prevalent, subtle biases in media. For instance, every single headline from the recent French election mentioned "far-right" Le Pen without also mentioning any ideological affiliation of the other candidates. Painting your opponent as an extremist is an effective political tactic, and "far-right" certainly sounds extreme. Were most media outlets opposed to Le Pen, hence the extreme label? Why not label any other candidates?
I'm not necessarily optimistic about the prospects for unbiased news, but I will be watching this project as it progresses.
They call her "far-right" because that's what she is. The party is called "Front National", after all – "Front" as in war. They don't mind the label. It's simply a description of fact, with the possible caveat that some of their economic ideas aren't that different from those on the far left.
The media also regularly labels the other candidates, and nobody is complaining about them any more than Clinton complained when someone said she was left of Trump, politically.
"[...]Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to go to a runoff to determine the next president, official returns showed. One is a political novice, the other a far-right firebrand "
"Mr. Macron, a former investment banker, abandoned traditional parties a year ago to form his own movement with an eclectic blend of left and right policies."
"[...] the mainstream right candidate François Fillon had nearly 20 percent, and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon had 19.6 percent."
As to why she is labeled "extreme", Wikipedia says:
- She favours a "radical change of politics in order to drastically reduce upstream the influx of illegal immigrants towards France"
- She supported a referendum on whether to reinstate capital punishment in France
- "But I openly admit that, to some extent, I admire Vladimir Putin."
- "I do not believe that there was an illegal annexation: there was a referendum, the citizens of Crimea wanted to join Russia."
- Denouncing "the US supremacy", she "refused the idea that France slavishly followed the USA in this new stalemate"
I know this is petty, but I kinda hope they build this on better technology than MediaWiki. MediaWiki has lots of annoying pitfalls. For example, there is no native support for threaded conversations. Also they have 2 or 3 different math syntaxes and no consensus on which one should be used where.
I love the sentiment. But how does this differ from Wikinews? Is this not just arbitrarily passing the buck of "gatekeeper" to whatever people have enough free time to contribute?
This is almost exactly what "De Correspondent"[1] in The Netherlands strives to be, with regards to ads, open data and relying on experts among their readers. They announced that they'll open source their CMS but it's not available yet. Too bad really.
Has potential, as a news junkie I'm interested in both using and contributing to this. Heaven knows internet news delivery needs an overhaul. Google could have solved his problem years ago but have instead chosen to profit off it.
I'm interested to see how this project evolves. As it is, even before all the furor about "fake news", I found myself consistently using Wikipedia to get summary and background information about ongoing news events, where mainstream news sources would present new data without any context and deliberately avoiding showing information about primary sources where available in favor of more internal links to other stories that give a glimpse of the point-in-time view of an ongoing story.
This is even more pronounced for retrospective coverage, where developments in the story as it had evolved are hard to glean from the coverage at the time, but important facts are surfaced throughout the coverage that are often elided in a retrospective published by a news source, but are well-represented, even controversially (where facts disagree or question the overall narrative).
My main complaint about the current trend in journalism (under Trump) is that the desire to sell clicks is so strong that you get no idea whether anything that happens is highly unusual or just routine, but the negative spin is so heavy that I can no longer trust that I'm being told how unusual each event is unless I really dig into it to find out.
A great example is the ongoing harassment of international travelers in the US. The impression I get is that things have gotten much worse, but there's certainly ample evidence of unpleasant behavior even under previous administrations, and some slim cherry-picked data saying that it's gotten worse. This is clearly a space where better sourcing of primary sources would help to make things a lot clearer, and to an extent, a somewhat adversarial approach to news research would help to reduce the tendency towards alarmism.
Supporting Wikitribune means ensuring that that journalists only write articles based on facts that they can verify
This is hardly the only source of bias in the news, which is an age-old problem. We'd be better off just expecting news organizations to announce their bias up front so that we don't have to read between the lines in order to ferret out its nuances.
It's also unclear what he means by "facts they can verify"
Wales founded an encyclopedia on the basis that everything had to be "verified" by linking to a "secondary source", which in the case of recent events generally meant linking to a news report by a "reliable" subset of the same media Wikitribune aims to compete with.
The other alternative, of course, is to link purely to primary sources like Open Data, online video and public figures' Twitter feeds for recording the fact they made an announcement. Wikipedia tended to frown on such behaviour largely because a "WP:SYNTH" policy recognised that stringing together multiple facts often implied decidedly non-factual conclusions (and if no other reliable source had drawn together those facts then it probably wasn't important and quite possibly wasn't a valid inference to be drawing). And whilst "X responded that" is certainly a fact, whether X's statement can reasonably be interpreted as accurate is generally a matter of opinion. Unqualified reporting of "X said $contentiousclaims" because they can't be conclusively established as non-factual is itself an editorial stance.
Most news media doesn't exactly hide its biases though (and the worst news media for factual accuracy tends to be the most explicit about declaring it)
It concerns me that they don't know the difference between 'lead' and 'led'.
Otherwise I love the idea that there must be an attributable source to all information they present -- no more "senior government officials" or "anonymous FBI agents"...
Sometimes anonymous sources are the only way you can cover a story. For example, during my time as a local journalist I regularly had former and current employees of my local council leak information to me. But I couldn't name them so I would refer to them as 'senior council officials' or 'council insiders'.
I was excited to read the announcement. Then I discovered it is not really ready to go. This gives me the impression that it is half baked. That's really not the impression they should be making with something so important.
I tried to register as a supporter. Upon submitting my credit card, I got a CloudFlare error. I have no idea what was supposed to happen when I registered.
When I received the confirmation email, I clicked the "confirm" button, was asked to prove I was human by identifying photos of gas stations, then taken to the website of impossible.com instead of WikiTribune.
Does anyone here remember Jimbo's earlier big "charity" venture -- CiviliNation? Jimbo was very recently on Reddit, trying to drum up donations for Wikitribune. It was asked, how will Wikitribune be different than the CiviliNation.org non-profit that Jimmy set up with his gal-pal Andrea Weckerle? Wales replied that since he was the "primary funder" of CiviliNation, the argument that it had bilked donors of money was moot in his mind.
Let's see: CiviliNation's Form 990s from 2010-2014 total $82,428 in contributions. If Jimbo was the "primary funder", that's at least $41,215. So he attests that he donated over $41K to CiviliNation -- while Weckerle took $63,228 in salary, on total contributions of $82,428. Meaning, he basically bankrolled most of his girlfriend Andrea Weckerle's personal income from CiviliNation, which accomplished what?
CiviliNation.org is barely a functioning website any more; its blog was last updated 13 months ago. Wales was so charitably inept that he forked over $41K to a failed attempt to "fix" online civility that ultimately accomplished not much more than keeping his girlfriend in food, clothes, and shelter for a few years, with tax-deductible dollars.
Based on my observation of Jimmy Wales and Openserving, Wikia Search, CiviliNation, Impossible, and The People's Operator, I would say an easy case could be made that the man specializes in grifting and fraud.
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
Their terms of use are awful.[1] Note that they want to operate under British law, where libel law favors the subject. They have an indemnification clause, so their volunteers could be compelled to reimburse WikiTribune if WikiTribune loses a libel suit. That's happened in the UK; see the famous McLibel case, where McDonalds sued two Greenpeace volunteers. That decision was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights. But, post-Brexit, that level of appeal will no longer be available.
They also appear to have plagiarized the terms of use from other sites. One section reads "We may, in our sole discretion, limit or cancel quantities purchased per person, per household or per order. ... We reserve the right to limit or prohibit orders that, in our sole judgment, appear to be placed by dealers, resellers or distributors." That exact text appears on other sites, usually ones that sell tangible goods. It's completely inappropriate here. Sloppy.
This stuff matters when the business involves pissing people off. Don't volunteer to write for this organization unless and until they work out the liability issue.
[1] https://www.wikitribune.com/terms-of-use/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case
[+] [-] derriz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PJDK|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|9 years ago|reply
So far as I am aware (I am not an attorney) none of those institutions indemnifies voluntary contributors.
[+] [-] codeulike|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shshhdhs|9 years ago|reply
Wow, that liability is enough to keep me from participating.
[+] [-] tom_mellior|9 years ago|reply
Where do you get "for-profit" from? They can be a non-profit but still need money. But yeah, they should be explicit about that. Also, volunteers do part of the work.
[+] [-] lost_name|9 years ago|reply
Well, if so, they have a lot of company: https://goo.gl/zfz0pp
The entire document is all over the web. If it gets off the ground I would expect it to be updated.
This might be the original: http://secureglobalpay.net/site/support-resources/sample-ter...
[+] [-] Pigo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LordKano|9 years ago|reply
Influential editors burying stories that don't serve their personal political agendas and the like.
[+] [-] frik|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jim-jim-jim|9 years ago|reply
I think the real promise lies in Wikitribune potentially going toe-to-toe with "real news" like CNN or the Washington Post. These outlets also don't always get the facts straight and can't be said to have a diehard following. If a superior option presents itself, readers will follow.
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|9 years ago|reply
You'd find really salacious headlines: "Hillary Clinton Murder Victim Speaks" and the actual story would be about her fundraising.
They were arbitraging the cost of buying a FB ad (to drive traffic and start the viral loop) against how many ads they could run on the site.
[+] [-] benchaney|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmalsburg2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] backpropaganda|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tmat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RandyRanderson|9 years ago|reply
So the fact that they write front page article on some terrorist attack in say France that kills 5 while a similar drone strike on the same day in Afganistan kills 20 and gets buried on page 30 is the point.
Who was is that once said the first casualty in any war is truth? And how many blows did we miss that lead to that first casualty?
Regardless, I see little downside to this and hope it's successful!
[+] [-] abyssin|9 years ago|reply
Is striving for neutrality something the press should do? Or should it work on clarifying how biased it is, and why?
[+] [-] agumonkey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cooper12|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|9 years ago|reply
Getting facts wrong constantly is either incompetent journalism or malevolent behavior.
Selecting topics with bias but reporting them accurately creates value for everyone and the bias is rarely malevolent in mainstream media. It just reflects and enforces the world view of the writers and readers.
[+] [-] kristianc|9 years ago|reply
The fundamental problem that these sites run into is a thorough understanding of issues in the news requires context, and very often not the kind of context that can fit into an 800 word blog post on a subject.
An 800 word blog or article of any sort necessitates that you're going to make choices about which evidence you're going to include, which sources are credible and which sources are not, which sources add to the discussion vs which only serve to obscure. As soon as you do that, you're adding bias.
You can set out to build an 'evidence based' news site, but what you quickly find is that you've built a site with paid journalists (who have their own biases) supported by volunteers (who are the people most likely to have political skin in the game).
The problem is that people want a shortcut for everything - they want an 800 word post that will tell them everything they need to know about Syria. No such thing exists. There's no substitute for actually putting in the work and navigating the bias yourself.
[+] [-] dev_head_up|9 years ago|reply
Ha! Oh c'mon, anyone who's experienced the activistism of certain groups on Wikipedia knows there's plenty of people with a vested interest in this kind of thing.
[+] [-] remarkEon|9 years ago|reply
So, in attempt to not be "that guy" that just complains here's what I'd suggest as a start.
- Institutions need to drop their relationship with Facebook et al (The Guardian has just done this [1]).
- There's a few places (and in the interest of avoiding starting a flame war, I'll forgo naming them explicitly) that parade themselves as "objective" sources of news by telling you they're explaining "complicated" concepts in digestible ways. In my view, that's just a rhetorical tactic to disguise what is actually just advocacy journalism. It's not objective at all, and seeks to form your opinion rather than present you with data from which you form your own. These places need to either be shut down, or pivot back to what we'd traditionally consider actual reporting.
- I consider myself reasonably well read, and read the actual, physical paper daily (when I can, I suppose). There is a distinct difference between the content I see pushed on the internet and what's in the traditional paper and it's this: increasingly articles that belong on the opinion pages are pushed elsewhere, probably because they know it'll generate more clicks elsewhere on the site because it makes either a controversial or marginally supported claim. In my view this directly contributes to the loss of faith people have in the Journalistic profession because it's just so damn easy to point out instances of bias. So, hire some old school editors and fire the "social media" guy and put content where it belongs.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head right now, but I'm pretty convinced that "crowd-sourcing" is not the answer to this problem.
[1] http://digiday.com/media/guardian-pulls-facebooks-instant-ar...
[+] [-] smsm42|9 years ago|reply
I don't think social media has much to do with it. I think the confusion between the professions of journalist, entertainer and partisan political operative has much more to do with it.
> If you don't agree just ask yourself how often you visit the masthead of whatever newspaper
Why would it be important if I visit the masthead? That's like saying libraries are in crisis because people don't spend enough time in the lobby. That's not why one visits the library! The frontpage is an utilitarian tool, and if people can do without it, nobody cares.
> These places need to either be shut down
I don't think they should be shut down. If there's an audience for them, why not? Nothing "should be shut down" - if it has no audience, it will die off, it it does have one - it should serve it. The problem here is the audience of "give us facts and let us form opinion" is woefully underserved. This is solved by creating, not shutting down.
> So, hire some old school editors and fire the "social media" guy
Social media guy didn't write that awfully biased article. Some "journalist" did, the social media guy just posted the link on twitter. So why the social media guy should suffer? "Journalists" that do bad job should be called out and shamed, and social media is not where the blame should go. Hard to believe, but twitter can be used for good too, if only people would want to...
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
I'd add that your second point also contributes to loss of faith: When propagandists call their publications journalism, and when other journalists treat them seriously, it brings down the credibility of all journalism. If any quack could call themself a heart surgeon then it would hurt the credibility of real heart surgeons.
Also, when people see their side publishing propaganda, they assume that all journalism is propaganda: One side says this, the other says that, it's all the same (that thinking is an explicit goal of propaganda - not to persuade but to discredit everyone, leaving no source of truth). But it's not the same; truth has real meaning and value, an only liars say 'well, everyone lies'.
[+] [-] clarkmoody|9 years ago|reply
I seriously hope this project can overcome the prevalent, subtle biases in media. For instance, every single headline from the recent French election mentioned "far-right" Le Pen without also mentioning any ideological affiliation of the other candidates. Painting your opponent as an extremist is an effective political tactic, and "far-right" certainly sounds extreme. Were most media outlets opposed to Le Pen, hence the extreme label? Why not label any other candidates?
I'm not necessarily optimistic about the prospects for unbiased news, but I will be watching this project as it progresses.
[+] [-] matt4077|9 years ago|reply
The media also regularly labels the other candidates, and nobody is complaining about them any more than Clinton complained when someone said she was left of Trump, politically.
Example from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/world/europe/emmanuel-mac...
"[...]Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to go to a runoff to determine the next president, official returns showed. One is a political novice, the other a far-right firebrand "
"Mr. Macron, a former investment banker, abandoned traditional parties a year ago to form his own movement with an eclectic blend of left and right policies."
"[...] the mainstream right candidate François Fillon had nearly 20 percent, and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon had 19.6 percent."
As to why she is labeled "extreme", Wikipedia says:
- She favours a "radical change of politics in order to drastically reduce upstream the influx of illegal immigrants towards France"
- She supported a referendum on whether to reinstate capital punishment in France
- "But I openly admit that, to some extent, I admire Vladimir Putin."
- "I do not believe that there was an illegal annexation: there was a referendum, the citizens of Crimea wanted to join Russia."
- Denouncing "the US supremacy", she "refused the idea that France slavishly followed the USA in this new stalemate"
[+] [-] sid-kap|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocky1138|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextron|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spearo77|9 years ago|reply
https://vimeo.com/214586867
[+] [-] spiderfarmer|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Correspondent
[+] [-] stuffchunk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmos62|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodionos|9 years ago|reply
- http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail - home of ... data journalism
- https://careers.bloomberg.com/job/detail/47892 - seeking a ... data journalist
- https://www.usnews.com/topics/author/deidre-mcphillips - ... is a data reporter
[+] [-] gkoberger|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewla|9 years ago|reply
This is even more pronounced for retrospective coverage, where developments in the story as it had evolved are hard to glean from the coverage at the time, but important facts are surfaced throughout the coverage that are often elided in a retrospective published by a news source, but are well-represented, even controversially (where facts disagree or question the overall narrative).
My main complaint about the current trend in journalism (under Trump) is that the desire to sell clicks is so strong that you get no idea whether anything that happens is highly unusual or just routine, but the negative spin is so heavy that I can no longer trust that I'm being told how unusual each event is unless I really dig into it to find out.
A great example is the ongoing harassment of international travelers in the US. The impression I get is that things have gotten much worse, but there's certainly ample evidence of unpleasant behavior even under previous administrations, and some slim cherry-picked data saying that it's gotten worse. This is clearly a space where better sourcing of primary sources would help to make things a lot clearer, and to an extent, a somewhat adversarial approach to news research would help to reduce the tendency towards alarmism.
[+] [-] lr4444lr|9 years ago|reply
This is hardly the only source of bias in the news, which is an age-old problem. We'd be better off just expecting news organizations to announce their bias up front so that we don't have to read between the lines in order to ferret out its nuances.
[+] [-] notahacker|9 years ago|reply
Wales founded an encyclopedia on the basis that everything had to be "verified" by linking to a "secondary source", which in the case of recent events generally meant linking to a news report by a "reliable" subset of the same media Wikitribune aims to compete with.
The other alternative, of course, is to link purely to primary sources like Open Data, online video and public figures' Twitter feeds for recording the fact they made an announcement. Wikipedia tended to frown on such behaviour largely because a "WP:SYNTH" policy recognised that stringing together multiple facts often implied decidedly non-factual conclusions (and if no other reliable source had drawn together those facts then it probably wasn't important and quite possibly wasn't a valid inference to be drawing). And whilst "X responded that" is certainly a fact, whether X's statement can reasonably be interpreted as accurate is generally a matter of opinion. Unqualified reporting of "X said $contentiousclaims" because they can't be conclusively established as non-factual is itself an editorial stance.
Most news media doesn't exactly hide its biases though (and the worst news media for factual accuracy tends to be the most explicit about declaring it)
[+] [-] dagw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empressplay|9 years ago|reply
Otherwise I love the idea that there must be an attributable source to all information they present -- no more "senior government officials" or "anonymous FBI agents"...
[+] [-] carlmungz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcculley|9 years ago|reply
I tried to register as a supporter. Upon submitting my credit card, I got a CloudFlare error. I have no idea what was supposed to happen when I registered.
When I received the confirmation email, I clicked the "confirm" button, was asked to prove I was human by identifying photos of gas stations, then taken to the website of impossible.com instead of WikiTribune.
[+] [-] Thekohser|9 years ago|reply
Let's see: CiviliNation's Form 990s from 2010-2014 total $82,428 in contributions. If Jimbo was the "primary funder", that's at least $41,215. So he attests that he donated over $41K to CiviliNation -- while Weckerle took $63,228 in salary, on total contributions of $82,428. Meaning, he basically bankrolled most of his girlfriend Andrea Weckerle's personal income from CiviliNation, which accomplished what?
CiviliNation.org is barely a functioning website any more; its blog was last updated 13 months ago. Wales was so charitably inept that he forked over $41K to a failed attempt to "fix" online civility that ultimately accomplished not much more than keeping his girlfriend in food, clothes, and shelter for a few years, with tax-deductible dollars.
Based on my observation of Jimmy Wales and Openserving, Wikia Search, CiviliNation, Impossible, and The People's Operator, I would say an easy case could be made that the man specializes in grifting and fraud.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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